Cam Cole: How did doctors miss Sidney Crosby’s neck injury?

How did doctors miss Sidney Crosby's neck injury?

To begin the semi-monthly Sidney Crosby dirge, it is first necessary to stress that doctors’ diagnoses, while not quite as random as, say, weather forecasts, are occasionally wrong.

Have you watched House lately?

That said, it is beyond comprehension that hockey’s No. 1 commodity — with access, one would (perhaps erroneously) assume, to the very best, cutting-edge specialists and medical diagnosticians; the kind that are instantly available, like magic, to professional sports teams — could have gone more than a year with a broken neck before anyone noticed.

Or, as Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dejan Kovacevic referred to the injury several times in his Monday column: a BROKEN NECK.

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ team physicians appear to have missed it.

The various specialists Crosby has consulted — having grown frustrated with his failure to recover from the initial concussion he suffered in the Winter Classic on Jan. 1, 2011 (and exacerbated four days later) — appear to have missed it.

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He complained from the very first, and the Penguins confirmed at the time, that he was suffering from “neck soreness,” which initially sounded like an excuse not to call it a concussion, because back then, teams were still ducking, diving and prevaricating to avoid using the C-word.

But assuming it wasn’t a red herring, assuming he actually had a sore neck, wouldn’t that be a sort of, you know, clue?

Wouldn’t that be likely to guide a team of doctors to the approximate area where — nearly 54 weeks after the fact — it took a specialist Crosby visited in California on the recommendation of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to finally find cracks in the first and second cervical vertebrae?

We know Brady’s a wizard at reading defences, but holy cow.

This was the story that broke on all-star weekend in Ottawa that had tongues wagging and heads shaking to an even greater degree than Tim Thomas’s White House snub, Alex Ovechkin’s excused absence, or Team Chara’s upset of Team Alfie.

The Penguins, reacting to Sportsnet radio host Bob McCown’s scoop and confirmation by Crosby’s agent, Pat Brisson, issued a statement Saturday that said: “The diagnosis of Dr. Robert S. Bray, a neurological spine specialist based in Los Angeles, is that Sidney Crosby had suffered a neck injury in addition to a concussion. Dr. Bray reports that the neck injury is fully healed. Those findings will be evaluated by independent specialists over the next few days. The most important goal all along has been Sidney’s return to full health, and we are encouraged that progress continues to be made.”

Yes, but.

If the cracked bones in his neck are now “fully healed”, then barring a visit by Crosby to Lourdes in the meantime, they seemingly couldn’t have been caused by that innocent-looking elbow from Boston’s David Krejci on Dec. 5, the blow that brought back his post-concussion symptoms and has kept him out for most of two months.

Or maybe they could. But if not, it seems the injury must have happened 13 months ago and, with benefit of hindsight, if you look at the video of the Victor Hedman hit, four days after Dave Steckel cold-cocked Crosby in the Winter Classic, it is quite possible that it occurred on the big Tampa defenceman’s hit from behind that made first contact with Crosby’s neck.

So either the various doctors on the Penguins’ medical team, and later specialists and more specialists and later still Crosby’s famous chiropractic neurologist, Prof. Ted Carrick, were so busy analyzing his brain that they forgot to look at his neck, or the MRI/X-ray technology failed to detect the injury.

It’s funny, if funny is the word, because the Penguins — though they blew the initial call, allowing Crosby to play another game after he was so clearly knocked loopy by Steckel — have been as proactive on concussions, and the head blows that cause them, as any team in hockey.

Remember GM Ray Shero supporting the suspension of Pens’ Matt Cooke last season, refusing to condone Cooke’s repeated head shots, saying those hits had to be taken out of the game? Think of how cautious — some have argued over-cautious — the team has been in staying arm’s-length from Crosby and allowing him to set his own recovery agenda and timetable for returning.

It doesn’t excuse the Pens from being second-guessed, of course, but it does make any fair-minded person wonder what they could have done differently?

Who knows, maybe the next great scandal in sports is going to be team doctors, and the inherent conflict of interest when they are being paid by the teams, which need their best players on the ice to win games and sell tickets. Maybe even the appearance of conflict is why, as player salaries grow, more and more are going outside the cocoon to get second and third opinions before entrusting their futures entirely to team-hired medics.

Those decisions never fail to create a degree of friction between the athlete and his employer. Eric Lindros and the Philadelphia Flyers quarreled over their handling of his concussion issues. Cody Hodgson’s decision to seek outside help for his back injury caused a distinct coolness from the Vancouver Canucks’ end.

But that doesn’t seem to have been the case here. Crosby has seen pretty much whomever he wanted to see about his condition, inside and outside the Penguins organization.

Perhaps that’s why there doesn’t seem to be any overt ill feeling between the superstar and his employers, why Crosby is reported to have watched the all-star game at his former landlord’s house with chairman of the board Mario Lemieux.

The Pens may have allowed him to play when he shouldn’t have, last Jan. 5, but he wanted to be out there. They may have missed his broken neck, but so did everyone else. The good news, Monday, was that he was in full gear, skating with his teammates.

All we know for sure is that medical science has not, so far, covered itself with glory in the case of hockey’s greatest asset. The prognosis, at the moment, is as much of a coin-toss as the diagnosis seems to have been.

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